Linda Jones - Romancing the Crown - Max & Elena

She hated the dark.

“Yes, something’s wrong.” For good measure, because she was so furious, she kicked one of the tires. “Bargain rentals rent cars that should have been sent off to the glue factory.”

“I think that’s supposed to be horses that go to the glue factory,” he corrected, not bothering to hide his amusement.

“Not in this case.” She snorted. “I would have been better off with a horse. At least with a horse if you feed it and take care of it, it’ll take you where you want to go.”

“Not in my experience,” Max muttered.

He wasn’t much for horseback riding, despite the fact that riding to the hunt was supposed to be the sport of kings. But he could easily picture her on the back of a horse. A purebred stallion. Black as the night to contrast with her fair skin.

An image of her riding bareback in the fine old tradition of Lady Godiva suddenly flashed through his brain.

With a start, Max jerked himself to attention. “What seems to be the trouble? With the car,” he added, looking at her pointedly as he got out of his vehicle.

Max walked over to her and took a cursory look beneath the hood. There was hardly enough light left to make out the separate parts, much less what was wrong.

Her frowned deepened. There was no point in wasting time tinkering with it. “The distributor cap is burned through.”

That was far more specific than he’d ever gotten with a car. He knew enough to keep the fluid levels up, the oil new and jumper cables in his trunk. “And you know this how?”

“I lived with a mechanic for a while.”

He looked at her. “Lover?”

She thought of Roy Anderson, potbelly, booming laugh and perpetual grease on his hands. His wife had been a short-order cook in the diner next to his repair shop. One of the many homes she’d passed through in her life in the system.

Roy was roughly forty years her senior and basically a decent guy, but she laughed at the thought of his being anyone’s lover, even his wife’s.

“Hardly.”

Max was tempted to ask her to elaborate, but she didn’t look inclined and it was none of his business. He only figured on getting as personal as was necessary with her in order to capture Weber.

“Well, since you’re so sure, there’s nothing much to be done here.” He opened the door to the passenger side. “Hop in. We can call for towing from that town just up ahead.”

She’d already seen the faint lights being turned on in the town down the road. Tiny pinpricks against the horizon. They’d been the only thing sustaining her, even though there didn’t seem to be enough lights on to properly accommodate the top of a moderate-size birthday cake.

She frowned. She knew towns like that. Small, terminal things where people’s souls shriveled up, yearning for something better. Mechanics were not always on hand. Took talent to fix things, make them right. People with talent moved on to where the pay was better, the life more exciting.

“Don’t count on it.”

“Now aren’t you glad I came along?”

She ignored the annoyingly cheery note in his voice. Turning her back to Ryker, she popped her trunk. There was no way she was leaving her equipment behind.

“Otherwise,” he was saying, watching her, “it might just be you and the coyotes before long.”

The thought was far from thrilling, especially given the way she felt about the dark, a feeling that dated back to the time she was eight and had lived with a minister and his wife who never raised a hand to her, but believed that leaving her in a locked closet for hours would make her submissive to their authority and save her immortal soul.

Cara looked at Ryker and wondered just how much better off she was with this man, who professed to want a partnership with her, than the coyotes. At least with the coyotes, you were aware of the immediate danger.

Leaning into the trunk, she took out the portable fax machine and her notebook computer. She stopped to take her oversize purse out of the front seat along with her shapeless overnight bag and then, arms loaded, trudged over to his car.

“Pop your hood.”

Max moved to take something from her, but she pulled back. She was being territorial. Why didn’t that surprise him?

“Is that anything like ring my chimes?”

“The car’s hood,” Cara said from between clenched teeth. The grin on his face was beginning to annoy her immensely. More annoying still was the way his grin made her feel. As if she were a ball of yarn about to tumble down a hill, in imminent danger of unraveling.

He popped the hood as she asked, and Cara placed her things inside the trunk, taking care to secure them as best she could. Rounding the back, she came up to the passenger side and slid in. She hit her feet against something on the floor. Curious, she bent over and picked up the device he had only moments earlier pushed to the floor when he’d seen her.

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the rectangular object. “What’s this?”

He always felt that using the truth as far as it could go was easier than inventing lies from start to finish. He kept his face forward as he started the car. “A tracking device.”

Cara examined the lit screen. The cursor was dormant. “Doesn’t seem to be tracking anything.”

“It’s not.” Reaching over, he pressed the button and shut it off. The screen went blank. “Got everything you need?”

She traveled light. Her requirements were few. “Except for Weber.”

He nodded, taking the car back on the road. “We’ll get him, too.”

We .

It sounded odd, hearing the pronoun applied to her. She’d never really been part of “we” before. Oh, occasionally the word was bandied about in reference to her within the family she was currently staying with. But no one really meant it. She was Cara and they were “we.” If the two mixed, it was only for the moment.

Reality was always waiting for her around the bend. A new family, a fresh separation. She learned to rely only on herself. Cut down on the people to blame as well.

Cara raised her chin, slanting a glance at him. “I don’t know about ‘we’ catching him, but I know I will.”

“Certainly not a shy, shrinking violet, are you?”

But she had been, more than once. And learned the hard way that selling her soul just for a pat on the head, a hug, a kind word, was selling herself far too short.

“Shrinking violets get their roots pulled up, they get stuck in a vase, then tossed out when they’re no longer pretty.”

The road ahead was flat, with no headlights coming at Max from the opposite side. He spared her a long look. She made it sound personal. Had she been dumped by a lover? he wondered.

If she had, it would have been because of that razor-sharp tongue of hers, not because her looks had anything to do with it. As far as that went, the woman was a keeper. He bet she’d just love to hear that.

“Sounds as if you’ve got firsthand knowledge about that.”

Cara absolutely hated being analyzed. “Maybe you should hang out a shingle and go into the head shrinking business instead of tailing people other people are after.”

He smiled, more to himself than at Cara. “I’ve had enough career changes for the time being.”

She pretended to raise a brow in surprise. “You were something else before you made a habit of getting in other people’s way?”

Max thought of life in the palace. If he’d followed in the footsteps of his father, he would have learned how to look down on people and use them to his own advantage. That life had never been for him, even though he’d been trained for it from the day he was born.

“I ran a charm school,” Max said sarcastically. He glanced at her again before looking back at the lonely road. “You might have benefited from it.”